


Of Bells and Basketball

by Diary



Category: Glee
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Bechdel Test Fail, Canon Character of Color, Canon Gay Character, Cousins, Family, Friendship/Love, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Minor Sam Evans/Mercedes Jones, POV David Karofsky, POV Male Character, POV Queer Character, Past Suicide Attempt, Post-Episode: s03e14 On My Way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 22:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6258823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repost. After his suicide attempt, Dave goes to live with his cousins, talks to Kurt on the phone a lot, and tries to sort out his feelings. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Bells and Basketball

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Glee.

Over the phone, Dave tells Kurt, “My little cousin hates me.”

“Has he hurt you?”

Rolling his eyes, he points out, “He’s less than five feet and under a hundred pounds. At best, he can pinch me hard enough to leave red skin.”

He decides it’s probably best not to mention how Jamie threw a toy at the back of his head when he first arrived.

“Emotionally, David,” is Kurt’s humourless response.

Sighing, Dave leans back on his bed. “I don’t know,” he answers. “Jamie used to love it when I visited. He’d follow me around and try to get me to play with him and would usually fall asleep on me. I used to think he was so annoying, but now-”

Now, he’d give anything to have his cousin look at him as if he were someone important.

“I’m not sure how to ask this, but: Is his-” Kurt pauses.

“I don’t know if it’s me being gay, me making everyone upset, or me moving in. Or any combination of the above,” Dave answers. “He doesn’t talk to me much.”

There’s a knock on the door, and Jael says, “David, Jamie’s having an ice-cream attack. Would you mind taking him to the park and buying him a double-fudge mint green cone?”

0

“So, which is it?”

Jamie continues attacking the ice-cream cone.

“If it’s the liking boys thing, I can’t change that. Believe me, if I could-” He pauses and thinks about Kurt. If he’d been straight, he probably never would have realised what a great friend and person Kurt is. “There was a time when, if I could have changed who I was, who I liked, I would have. But I can’t. I’m still the same person you’ve always known, though.”

Leaning back, he says, “If it’s the other thing- I’m sorry. I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

“Is Kurt your boyfriend?”

“No,” he answers. Then, he realises he doesn’t remember ever talking about Kurt around Jamie. “How do you know about him?”

“I talked to him on the phone,” Jamie informs him. “You had a Christian toy in your room, and it had his name on the bottom. I found him in the phonebook, and I talked to him. Why did you have his toy?”

His first feeling is anger at Kurt for not telling him, but he quickly does some mental math and realises the phone call probably happened when Kurt was terrified of and hated him.

He wonders if he really wants to have this conversation.

No, he doesn’t. Some part of him is already making a list of all the pros of his little cousin more-or-less ignoring his existence.

Be a man, he tells himself.

“I’m going to buy some ice-cream. Do you want another one?”

“Soda,” Jamie inquires.

“No telling Jael,” he orders.

Jamie rolls his eyes. “Duh.”

After get him a small ice-cream and Jamie a soda, they move to a shady picnic table. “When I started high school, I became a bad person,” he says. “I hurt other people. On purpose. And then, I started- I never liked girls, and I started to realise I might like boys. And I was so afraid that I became even worse. I bullied Kurt for a long time, and one of the things I did was steal his wedding topper. His dad was getting married.”

“You talk to him all the time,” Jamie says.

“Kurt found out I liked boys. And even though I put him through hell,” Jamie raises an eyebrow, but thankfully, doesn’t mention the swear jar his parents have in the living room, “he never hurt me back. He’s forgiven me, and we’re friends, now.”

“Did you give him his toy back?”

“It’s not a toy, Jamie. And no. I threw it away.”

“Did you give him money to buy a new one?”

“No,” he answers.

“You should,” Jamie informs him. “Time to go home.”

0

He looks up wedding toppers online, finds one like the one Kurt had, and wonders if he should mail the money or wait until he visits his parents next month and give it to Kurt.

0

“We go for ice-cream once a week,” Dave says. “I buy him a soda, and we talk. You come up a lot.”

“He’s trying to process things,” Kurt says. “What about you, David?”

“I’m fine,” he answers. “I miss my parents, but the last time- I’m not going to be responsible for them divorcing.”

As always, Kurt is quiet. Whenever they talk face-to-face, Kurt’s face is interesting when Dave’s mother comes up. He still hasn’t figured out what it means.

“There are some guys on the football team I hang out with. None of them harass the others,” he promises. “James is pissed at me for taking apart his lawnmower.”

“You did put it back together, didn’t you?”

“Of course, I did. I just made the engine 10% quieter so that it doesn’t wake me up. He says that it not being loud makes it seem like it doesn’t work properly.”

Kurt laughs. “Let me guess: You have no intention of returning it to its previous volume?”

“I like my Saturday naps, and if they’d stop putting miracle-grow on the lawn, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

“You could just sabotage the miracle-grow,” Kurt points out.

Dave finds himself laughing.

0

Dr Lexington looks at him. “I’m not sure you cutting contact with Kurt is a good idea, Dave.”

“I don’t want to stop talking to him. I just think not talking to him so much is a good idea.”

She continues looking patiently at him.

He’s willing to bet learning how to school their expression in such a way is part of getting certified for a psychiatric license.

“I know that me having all these feelings is a good thing. I just have to learn how to channel them appropriately. I’m not trying to get rid of them. It’s just- I talk to him all the time. Whenever something’s wrong, I call him. Whenever I have good news, I call him. When I visit my parents, I spend most of my time with him. And he and I are never going to happen. I just want to stop liking him as much as I do.”

“Well,” she says, “then, my suggestion would be to…”

0

“You don’t talk to Kurt as much as before.”

“I know,” Dave says. He pays for the ice-cream. “We’re both busy, lately-”

“You lied a lot to Uncle Paul and your mother,” Jamie interrupts. “Are you going to start lying to us, now?”

Jael and James both have less-than-friendly feelings towards his mom, and based on the tone and form of address, he guesses Jamie’s the same.

“No,” Dave promises. “Look, if you want to call Kurt, you can. I’ll give you his number if you don’t remember it. His Glee club is in the middle of preparing for a concert, and I have football and other things.”

For a long moment, there’s silence.

“It’s what you tried to do.” Jamie looks up with a glare. “I don’t care if you like boys. You know why I don’t play in the street? Because, even though I want to, I know that if I get runned over, Mama and Daddy would be sad. Uncle Paul would be sad.”

The utter terror he heard in his dad’s voice, how his dad clung to him, and the way his dad looked as the paramedics separated them and held his dad back comes flooding back.

“This was different,” he says. “Look, I know if something happens to me, people would be sad. But- when someone’s really hurt, they don’t always- I thought everyone would be happier if I was dead,” he confesses.

He knows this isn’t the type of thing a little kid should be hearing.

“People who are happy other people are dead aren’t good.”

Dave’s not sure he agrees, but he’s not going to argue. He and Jamie had family in Germany under Hitler. Besides, there are horrible people in the world who do worse things than he’s ever done, who never feel bad, and who never try to make things right.

“The point is, I wasn’t thinking the right way. There was something wrong with my brain that made me handle my feelings the wrong way, and I couldn’t stop myself.”

“But you’re better now?”

“I seeing one of Uncle Paul’s friends, and I know that if I ever start feeling really bad, again, I need to talk to someone right away,” he answers. He once asked Dr Lexington if he was better, now, and she’d gone on about things taking time and how he was doing better but wasn’t to a point where it’d be a good idea to stop therapy.

“Don’t try it, again,” Jamie orders.

0

“What about you, David,” Kyle Micksen asks. He raises a knife. “Got a girl in Lima?”

Reaching over, Dave grabs the soda can before Mick can stab it. “No.” Opening the can, he orders, “Knife down, Mick.”

Trying to ignore the fear he feels at the look on Mick’s face, he adds, “I’m not interested in dating right now. I just want to graduate and figure out where to go from there.”

Shrugging, Mick says, “Change your mind, and I know several girls who’d show you a good time.”

Sitting down, Elliot West quips, “And you’d know all about that. Want to come to Sara’s party, David? We can carpool. I promise this idiot,” he smacks Mick, “won’t be driving.”

“Name one idiotic thing I’ve done today.”

Both Dave and Elliot simply look at him.

“Okay, in the last hour.”

“You were going to use a knife to open your soda,” Dave points out.

“So, party?”

“I’ll see if my cousins will let me. I’m still not completely off restriction.”

His FaceBook has been deleted, and his parents have tried to get all his online things off the internet. He’s told everyone his parents to sent him to live with his cousins after he got into a few fights in Lima.

So far, there hasn’t been any trouble.

Mick seems to like him well enough, and he and Elliot share a fondness for making fun of Mick, who is a great football player, a genius strategist, and would lose in a contest of who’s more self-sufficient against Jamie.

“What kind of girl are you interested in, David?”

Before he can completely panic, Elliot says, “You’re not playing matchmaker, Mick. A person would have to be a complete- Knife down!”

“What? I need to cut my burger.”

Elliot begins cutting it.

“Your objection to eating it like a normal person,” Dave inquires.

“I’m a picky eater,” Mick says with an unapologetic shrug.

0

“David.”

He looks up from the game he and his teammates are watching.

“Kurt’s on the phone,” Jamie informs him. He steals a nearby bag of chips. “He sounds sad.”

“Who’s Kurt,” Mick asks.

Dave gets up and grabs a juice box. Even with several teenage boys over, Jael is standing firm against her war on soda. Junk food is fine, but soda is the ultimate evil.

“A friend from my old school,” he answers. “I’ll be back later.”

He goes to his room, shuts the door, lies down, and picks up the phone. “Hey. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kurt says. “I told your cousin-”

“Dude, I live with him. You can’t win against him, ever. He’s right, though. You do sound- What’s up?”

“If this is a bad time, you would be honest, wouldn’t you? I’m happy you’re getting closer to your team.”

“Yeah, I’d be honest. It’s not. Promise.”

“Blaine and I broke up.”

Dave stares at the ceiling.

He knows he shouldn’t be happy. He’s supposed to be getting over Kurt, and he’ll admit the other boy isn’t a bad guy. Be a friend, he tells himself. “I know that must hurt,” he says. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I thought I was in love with him,” Kurt says, and he sounds close to crying.

Dave has always hated it when Kurt cried, even when he was the one making it happen. Now, he hates it even more because he doesn’t know if he can do anything to make it stop. “What happened?”

“We discovered we weren’t compatible,” Kurt says. He’s definitely crying. “It was amicable. And I want to replace his shampoo with pink hair dye.”

Telling his curiosity to shove it, Dave chuckles. “I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing.” Except for the part where he tried to confess he might be in love with Kurt and was soundly rejected, but he knows now isn’t the time to mention it. “I mean, Santana was the closest person I ever had a relationship with, and- If I can do something, I will, but you need to tell me what.”

“It hurts,” Kurt plaintively declares. “I keep thinking I could have done things differently. I keep remembering how much of a stalker I was to Finn. I keep wanting him to call and tell me he’s seen the light. I keep stopping myself from doing the same thing.”

Dave wonders if Kurt is drunk or under the influence of something else and feels a chill at the way the words are so close to his own situation.

“I’m sorry,” he offers.

“I thought I was finally doing things right.”

“Who says you weren’t,” Dave asks. “I mean- things didn’t work out, and that sucks. But you were both happy, weren’t you? No stalking, no bullying, nothing like what went on with me and you and you and Finn. Relationships don’t last sometimes, but they can be good before they end, right?”

Kurt is silent for a long moment, and Dave rolls his eyes and tries to suffocate himself with his pillow.

Sounding less teary, Kurt says, “Thank you, David.”

“Thank you?”

“You just put things in perspective.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s good,” Kurt assures him. “I need to be alone right now, but can I call you tomorrow, after school?”

“Sure,” he answers. “But you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah, I promise. Bye, Dave.”

“Bye.”

0

“I found a gay bar near you,” Kurt says. “I mean, if you’re not ready or-”

“I’ll check it out,” Dave says. “What about you?”

“I’m destined to be alone.”

“Says the boy who’s had a boyfriend,” Dave replies.

“Blaine didn’t start liking me until I confessed to liking him.”

Closing his eyes, Dave takes a breath. “We’re friends. So, don’t take this the wrong way. But I liked you. And you’ve said before that there are other gay boys at McKinley. Some of them might have liked you, too. They just aren’t ready to come out, and they handled their feelings better than I did.”

For a long moment, there’s silence, and Dave feels the sinking feeling in his stomach getting deeper and darker.

“Your point about my melodramatic self-pity is well-noted,” Kurt says. “You’re going to find a boy, David. One who makes you laugh and who you’ll make many happy memories with.”

“I hope so,” he says. The boy won’t be Kurt, though, he knows. “But right now, I’m just trying to focus on keeping one teammate from getting killed and another teammate from killing him.”

“Do tell.”

“Well, there’s Mick, who has ADHD, and his best friend, Elliot. Mick’s a great guy, but he does the stupidest things. Elliot’s usually the one doing damage control.”

“I’m glad you’re making friends, Dave.”

“You sound like my father.”

“It’s still true. How are things with you and Jamie?”

“I guess better,” Dave answers. “He forced me to have a tea party with him a few days ago.”

“Is he prone to having tea parties?”

“I don’t know. Before all this happened, he used to love playing with an easy-bake oven and tried to get me to play with him. He also tried to get me to play with his toy cars.”

0

He’s going back to Lima tomorrow.

Z might be around. He has the money for the wedding topper packed. He’ll see his mom and dad.

Sighing, Dave gets up, opens his door, and almost steps on a sleeping Jamie.

Jamie’s eyes snap open when Dave leans down and places a hand on his shoulder. Looking up with fuzzy eyes, he asks in an unfocused voice, “Where are you going?”

“To get a snack. Why are you sleeping out here?” He looks down at the sleeping bag, pillow, and stuffed panda. He remembers a few times tripping over a pillow or a sleeping bag, but he, Jael, and James had all thought Jamie had just deposited them in the middle of the hallway floor when he was done instead of putting them up properly. “How many times have you done this?”

“Soda?”

“No.” He lifts his Jamie up and walks him to the kitchen. “There’s nothing here, and we aren’t leaving at this time of night. What’s going on?”

“So, I could hear the bells,” Jamie says. He brings his fist up to his mouth and nibbles on it while he blinks.

I really am an idiot, Dave realises with a mixture of emotions too strong for him to decipher.

He tried to hang himself in his closet. When he moved in here, several bells had been tightly wrapped around the closet handles, and Jamie had thrown a fit when he’d started to untie them. Jael had asked him to leave them on and explained Jamie was going through a phase of putting bells up around the house.

Looking at it, he realises the significance of the placement of them: The backdoor, the bathroom door, the medicine cabinet, and the knife drawer in the kitchen.

Shit, he thinks.

Jamie’s always done weird things. He’s in love with Mulan, mixes his food together in disgusting combinations, and once left a note in saying he wasn’t running away, but if no one would take him to Pluto, he’d ride a bus to NASA and make them take him. Him going through a bell phase hadn’t set off any alarms.

“Come on, buddy,” Dave says. He picks Jamie and heads towards Jael and James’s room.

It’s late, but he doesn’t think he can handle waiting until morning to tell them him being here might seriously be warping his little cousin’s psychological welfare.

0

“David Karofsky, I swear if you’ve done something- Call me,” Kurt shrilly snaps.

There are four voicemails.

He’s willing to beat they’re all less-than-understanding.

Conceding he definitely should have charged his cell phone, Dave calls Kurt.

“David?”

“I’m fine. Look, something came up with Jamie, and my dad and mom decided to come down here instead. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

Why can’t everyone forget what happened, he wonders. Some part of him feels like Kurt is only his friend because of guilt and fear. His little cousin, instead of being worried about whatever things he used to be worried about, is now trying his best to protect him when Dave and the others are supposed to be protecting him. The way his dad still looks at him makes his heart literally hurt.

“Is he okay?”

“No.” Dave sighs. “He’s been camping outside of my room.”

After he’s through explaining, Kurt says, “I sometimes stand outside Dad and Carole’s bedroom and make sure I can see my dad’s chest rising and falling. David, listen to me: You were sick. People hurt you, and you didn’t know how to cope, and it made your brain-”

“I’ve heard all this,” he grits out.

“If you had been in a car accident or gotten cancer or been attacked by a pink flamingo, Jamie would still be worried. He’d still be doing something to try to keep you from getting hurt again,” Kurt insists. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“I made the choice,” Dave says. “Drunk drivers don’t get off for hitting someone.”

He made Kurt’s life a living hell, and he’s hurt his dad, his baby cousin, and the rest of his family, in more ways than just his suicide attempt. There’s all the arguments he instigated when his parents desperately tried to help him, all the times he refused to have anything to do with Jamie, and all the times he said nasty things about Jael. Someday, maybe, he’ll get things right, but he’s starting to wonder if the day will ever come, or if he’s going to have to find a way to live with always screwing up until the day he finally dies.

“Okay,” Kurt says. “I’m going to be brutally honest, and you are going to be quiet until I’m done. I was once a bully.” Dave makes a protesting sound, and Kurt says, “Quiet, David Karofsky. I was. I took joy in hurting Rachel. And as much as I don’t like to admit it, I was just as much of a creepy stalker as you once were. I got Quinn kicked out of her house because I wanted Finn. I took my bullying of Rachel even further when she and Finn started their will-they-won’t-they dance. My dad, the person I love more than anyone in this world, I used him as pawn in my attempts, and when I got jealous, when the issues Finn and I had with one another came to a head, he almost lost the woman he’s in love with.”

Kurt sighs, but before Dave can interject, he continues, “And you and I don’t have the right to go through life thinking the things we’ve done don’t have consequences. However, never fully living because of the guilt isn’t going to change things. The cliché of not living in the past is valid. We have people who love us, David, some of whom we’ve hurt, and some of whom we haven’t. We owe it to them to not only try to make ourselves better but to try to be someone they don’t have to worry about, someone they don’t feel sad about when they think of us.”

“I meant what I said. I’m happy you’re alive, David. So is Jamie, and I don’t know what the best thing to do to help him is, but I know that feeling guilty because he’s happy you’re alive and wants to make sure you stay that way isn’t it.”

After a long moment, Dave wipes his eyes and asks, “Are you done?”

“Yes.”

“I’m guilty because he’s a little kid, and he shouldn’t be trying to worry about saving an actual person’s life.”

“Help him get over it, then. I’m not trying to sound flippant. Obviously, dealing with a child’s fears isn’t going to be easy, but figure out what you need to do and do it.”

“Thanks,” he says. “How are things going between you and Blaine?”

Yay, he thinks. I managed to say Blaine Anderson’s name in a completely normal tone of voice.

“We make better friends than we did boyfriends,” Kurt glumly answers.

Dave thinks he might understand. For a long time, he’s been telling himself he and Kurt make decent friends; even if Kurt did give him a chance, they probably wouldn’t work. No matter how many times he tells himself this, though, some part still thinks they could live happily ever after.

“Look,” he says, “I should probably go. Try to start figuring this out. I’ll call you in a day or two, alright?”

“Take care of yourself, Dave.”

“You, too.”

0

“Karofsky?”

Oh dear God he doesn’t even believe in, why now?

Putting a hand on Jamie’s shoulder, he turns, and then, relaxes when he sees it’s Sam Evans, Mike Chang, and Mercedes Jones. The first and last are holding hands, and Jamie immediately starts staring at Chang’s eyes. Gayness isn’t a phase, and Dave’s willing to lay odds that his cousin’s fascination with Asian eyes isn’t, either.

“Who are you three? Are you two boys on the- Um-”

“Hey,” Evans says. He lets go of Jones’s hand and kneels down. “We’re not the ones who hurt your cousin. How are you holding up, kiddo?”

Dave thinks he might like Sam Evans. Not in a want-to-be-his-boyfriend way (one thing he can say for himself is he’s never fallen in love with a straight guy) but in this-dude-is-cool way. Sam tried to beat the crap out of him and has a body responsible for provoking certain reactions, but here he is being nice to and patient with Jamie.

“Okay,” Jamie answers. “I was really mad, but now, I’m only worried sometimes. Basketball,” he says, and Dave sees Chang is carrying one.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He grins. “Me and Mike were about to play. Do you and your cousin want to join us?”

“No,” Dave answers. Jamie doesn’t understand basketball on TV, and the one time he tried to play it outside of school, he was caught dragging a ladder towards the hoop in determination to make a basket anyway he could.

He sees how uncomfortable Chang is with Jamie’s staring, but before he can see anything, Sam notices, too, and laughs. “You can be on my team, and this one can be on Mike’s. Loser has to-”

“Sam.”

Sighing, Evans grins at Jones. “Fine, loser has to say winner is awesome three times.”

“I want to do skins against shirts,” Jamie announces.

“Jael will kill me.”

“You can be skin, then,” Jamie says. “I wanna play basketball, David.”

…

After Mike and Jamie win, the five of them sit down at a picnic table under the shady tree.

Lifting Jamie onto his lap, Mike asks, “Are you planning on coming back? If so, I can talk to Beiste. There’s some openings on the basketball team.”

“No, I’m just visiting.” He resists the urge to ask about Kurt. They’re supposed to meet, later, but all these thoughts of Kurt changing his mind, of whether seeing him face-to-face is really a good idea, and so on keep running through his head.

Hearing the ice-cream truck, Dave digs out his wallet and asks, “Jamie, can I talk to them alone? Want some ice-cream?”

After Mercedes gives him a piece of girly paper and a sparkly pen, Jamie takes everyone’s order, accepts their money, and runs off. 

Taking a deep breath, Dave begs himself not to cry. “I’m sorry,” he says. “When I gave that apology in the Glee room, I didn’t fully mean it. But I do now. I treated Kurt and Finn the worst, but I also treated you three and all the others- it wasn’t right.”

Mercedes reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “A lot of the Glee kids were bullies before they joined. Actually, Santana still kind of is one,” she says.

Mike and Sam nod.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Now that you’re changing, we’re not going to hold things against you.”

Looking down, he says, “Thanks.”

Kicking him, Sam orders, “Don’t sweat it. Besides, we want to be on good terms with the guy Kurt talks about all the time.”

Before Dave can ask if it’s good talk or bad talk, Jamie reappears.

After everyone gets their snacks, Mercedes asks, “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“David’s going to make me special airplanes for my room like the ones he has in his room at Paul’s,” Jamie informs them. “And then, he’s going to help me dress my stuffed animals so that they’ll be warm when we take them to Kurt for special clothes!”

Some part of Dave is completely embarrassed, especially given the fact the three are obviously close to laughing, but he looks at Jamie, and he sees his cousin looking at him like he’s- like he’s someone important. Smiling, he nods. “Yep. Busy day ahead.”

Everything isn’t a 100% better, but right now, he finds himself honestly believing he’ll get to a point where it is.


End file.
